Little Soldier Boy
by Roi de l'Enfer
Summary: Sammy just wanted to know what Mary was like, but Dean's too much like his father to tell him.


"Hey, Dean?" A tired voice asked from the other side of the room, almost inaudible to Dean's ears. But, sadly, Dean heard his younger brother and let out a small sigh of agitation. "What, Sam?" He questioned, irritation clear in his voice. In the darkness, Dean saw his younger brother sit up on the bed, rubbing his eyes with his small palms. Dean watched carefully before looking away; he was probably just scared and needed Dean to walk him to the bathroom, or maybe he was hungry, though it didn't help that there really wasn't any food left in the crumhole of a motel room.

"What, Sam?" He asked again, raising his voice. He waited - rather impatiently, but he waited- for Sam's reply. At first, all he got was a yawn, but then the question he had came forth.  
"What was momma like?"

Dean froze. It was an instinct to him; whenever he had asked his father about it, John's glazed-over eyes would give him a small once-over before he threatened to throw the amber bottle filled with his own personal poison at him. But in this situation, it was Dean who was in his father's place, and he could only react with the one way he knew how.

"Don't ever ask about her, Sam." He shouted, sitting up from his lumpy and uncomfortable spot on the couch. Even in the darkness, he could see Sam visibly flinch at his words, though Dean continued on. "Don't ask about her, don't talk about her, don't even think about her!" His voice kept going higher and higher until it gave a small crack at the end. No. No, he wouldn't cry. His father didn't cry, so Dean wasn't aloud to cry either- no matter what.

"I-I'm sorry Dean, I just-"

"You just need to go to sleep. Forget it, Sam. Don't ever ask me, don't ask dad, don't ask anybody!" This time, his voice didn't crack. All emotions beside anger was clear from his voice; Dean Winchester was not going to show his younger brother how much it hurt him; how badly it hurt him to even think about his mom. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to cry, and he couldn't. "_Soldiers don't cry_," John would say. "_Soldiers obey orders, you hear_?_When I bark an order at you, you comply. No questions asked._"

Dean Winchester, the little soldier boy, needed to keep calm.

But then he heard it.

The soft sniffle that came from across the room, and as much as he didn't want to admit it, it broke his heart. His jaw clenched before he let out a sigh; jeez, he just wanted this moment in time to be over with."Sam," he murmured quietly, almost hoping that he didn't hear him. But at the sound of his brother's voice, he sniffled even louder. This time, a prolonged groan escaped from Dean's lips.

"Sammy."

Dean stood up, letting the moth-eaten blanket fall to the floor at his feet. After a moment of shuffling around in the darkness, his fingers grazed the cotton bed sheets and he gripped it faintly before hoisting himself up on the bed."Move over," he ordered, and Sam complied immediately.

But the sniffles didn't stop, and that made Dean feel even worse about it all. "You need to sleep." Dean muttered, huffing a bit. But yet again, the only reply from Sam was a sniffle- and sniffles from Sam wasn't something to be proud of. Groaning quietly and to himself, Dean got under the blankets with his brother and made him lay down.

As the sniffles began to subside, he put his arm around his brother. "Go to sleep." Again, it was an order, but less threatening than his last one. Now that his brother was silent, maybe they both could get some sleep and forget that any of this had ever happened. Dean let his body relax and he shut his eyes, welcoming sleep at any pace that it would come.

Sammy, on the other hand, had his eyes wide open and stared at his brother. After a minute or two of complete and utter silence, Sam broke it. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice shaky from the crying that had happened earlier."I... I just want to remember her. I-I'm sorry I brought it up."

No. Dean didn't want to deal with this, and he couldn't push it away like his father did. As John liked to remind him, he was weak, bitter, childish- a person like that couldn't be as strong as John. But Dean would never want his brother to see him cry. The giant taboo was plastered in the front of his brain. But at this moment, the wall was cracking, and if he didn't act soon, it would erupt violently.

"She was pretty." The comment startled Sam, who thought that Dean was either asleep or would lash out at him. He was surprised, but he was getting somewhere, and he liked that. "She... she would sing a song to me before bed."

"Did she do that for me?" Asked the younger Winchester brother, his eyes wide in wonder, though there were clearly traces of sadness in them. Dean, on the other hand, still had his eyes shut as tightly as they could be, not wanting to let Sam see anything other than what he wanted him to see.

"Yeah." He said sharply, then turned over on the bed. The loss of warmth made Sam pout a bit, as did Dean's curt answer. And yet again, silence broke out between the two, but it wasn't as comfortable as it was before. Both siblings wanted nothing more than to writhe around; to let more of their emotions out. But the only thing that welcome them was the darkness, and the loss of a parental warmth that they both desperately wanted.


End file.
